It has been almost a year since we started the Otaku Elimination Game and after finally reaching a collective point of which we could all agree upon, we have decided to end what the blogosphere knew as The Otaku Elimination Game. The truth is that somewhere around early 2010 we came to a conclusion that we did not want to take the game any further and had suspended it indefinitley; our reason crafted into cryptic clues for our readers to perhaps make some sense of and make up their own mind upon the actuality of the matter without backing down from what we stood for.

One year onwards and we believe that what we stood for is no longer relevant and we do not wish to fool anybody else into believing that in October 2010 our message stands true. Whilst we do not, and will not regret our actions in the past, we believe they should be seen as a history lesson of sorts and never forgotten.

Let’s take some time to look at the clues we left…

All the titles of the clues contained numbers. These numbers were all ‘cryptic’ numbers in various cultures and had varying meanings. This was to indicate that the following post was not just spam or nonsense but similarly to the numbers – contained a double meaning.

1. The piece of music titled 9413 was a piece of music slowed down and played in reverse. The piece of music was Majutsushi by Kawai Kenji. Well done to whoever was able to identify the piece as one of his works.

The Magician/Majutsushi/魔術師

2. By decoding the hex values in the post titled ‘1734’. The plain text output looks very similar to base64. When we decode the base64 we are left with a backwards encoded URL, if we reverse it we finally discover a URL that one reader had left as a single comment: http://jotei.asahi.co.jp/

The Empress/Jotei/女帝

3. Our next clue was the most obvious: a heavily pixelated picture of our final clue:

The Hermit/Inja/隠者

4. Once again, we see a repeat of the Jotei/The Empress clue.

These are all tarot cards in the major arcana, and by taking their numbers in the major arcana we are left with 1,3,9, and 3. 1+3+9+3 = 16. In the major arcana, number 16 – the tower or tou represents chaos, disillusion, downfall a realisation of the truth and drastic change; in other words – wisdom from crisis.

The Tower/Tou/塔

The Otaku Elimination Game; us as eliminators, we were not brought down, keep this clear in your mind. We say this not because we do not wish to lose face or appear as weak but because we would like to stress that our unbecoming was caused by ourselves, by a change in our ideals and our ethics, a change for the better that we are satisfied with having discovered.

We saw attempts to personally close us down, and we’re sorry that we couldn’t satisfy your ego by falling to your efforts. However, let it be known that we now understand that those who point guns at others can only expect to get shot themselves; maybe we were just lucky this time.

The Word ‘Otaku’

The truth is, the word ‘Otaku’ can’t be defined by us, it can’t be defined by Danny Choo, it can’t be defined by any single person but by all of us, working together as a collective group; anything else is merely semantics for elitism’s sake. The otaku world is small, both inside and outside of Japan and it is therefore important that we must all stick together and ensure that fandom of anime, manga, games and so on remains strong regardless of how we identify ourselves and how different as individuals we may be from one another.

Don’t misunderstand us; our suspicion of Danny Choo still remains high; we do not believe that his money making strategies are entirely morally correct, however this is not the time or place to discuss these matters, we only ask that if you wish to stand up against this behaviour that you do so without involving the ‘otaku element’ and look at the bigger picture, this will not only preserve peace within the otaku community but it will also ensure that perhaps even Danny Choo himself may see the moral shortcomings of how he does business. But once again; this is not the time nor the place for such matters.

Before we give our final parting words, we would like to say that we wish both the western and eastern non-Japanese otaku culture well, regardless of the words it uses to describe it’s fandom. We hope that the most diehard otaku can find things in common with even the most casual of otaku and that they can share their interests together instead of dividing themselves because they believe they are of a higher status.

And it is with that we say our goodbye; That is not to say that we will be gone, disappearing forever, But instead we will dissolve into the otaku culture and embrace it as one; our individual blogs are out there and maybe one day you will stumble across them; maybe you already have, but remember that in the otaku blogosphere, we are now no longer any different from you – In fact there is no more “you and I”…only “us”.

さよなら

The Otaku Elimination Game

The Major Arcana: Final Card (#21) – The World/Sekai/世界

“So powerful is the light of unity that it can illuminate the whole earth.”

Advertisements

Like this:

LikeLoading...

Related

13 responses to “The Otaku Elimination Game: One Year – It is Better to Create than to Destroy”

I remember in Esclaflowne they had these cards as a main theme, the main character was a psychical card reader who used cards just like that one, I specially remember la toure , it was a really good episode.

Oh, I remember this blog vaguely. I never did quite understand the method or rationale behind passing or eliminating various blogs. Was it just based on mistaken use of the word otaku? Seems pretty silly.

But then again, the entire anime blogging sphere is pretty silly to begin with.

Whatever happened to that much vaunted 2nd phase? Did it consist of that strange alternate reality game you were concocting? At what point did you decide to abandon it if it was indeed not the ARG, other than the aforementioned vague “early 2010”? How did this come back to mind after seven months of inactivity?

The internet is such a strange place, and fosters a variety of personalities and concepts that could never exist outside of it. Whenever I come across overtly meta concepts such as this, I always find that it’s a fun exercise to imagine trying to explain this to my non-english speaking near-Luddite grandmother.

Try to imagine this in spanish:

“Well, mama, it’s a blog about other blogs that incorrectly use the word otaku. What’s otaku? It’s Japanese people who are obsessed with animation and different things that go with it like toys and dolls and posters and stuff. Some non-Japanese people on the internet call themselves otaku and these guys don’t like it. What’s the internet? And what’s a blog? Um…”

For the record, I think I’ve only used the word otaku once in my Kuragehime post.

This is closer to what I was hoping OEG would be about. I’m glad that it has reached this point, and hope that the “essence” of it all will carry on into the collective culture. Good closing. Best of luck to everyone.

hello,
i really did enjoy your elimination game,,, i played it a long time. especially when i was depressed. i suffer from depression, and i still am quite depressed and suffer from severe anxiety. playing your game, the 1st one, I enjoyed the 1st edition the best, your game helped me to relieve my stress, worries and anxieties so much… i lost the game from my computer and now i cannot find it online, and it saddens me. i really wish you could send me the game or bring it back,,, you really do not know just how very much this game helps me get through a day…
i i hope you will consider what i have said and reply to my message soon.
thank you. tammy remando . ~ peace and love to you. ~